Problems booting from a 1GB USB flash disk

08-16-2009	#1 (permalink)
xp_even Just Joined! Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 9	Problems booting from a 1GB USB flash disk Hi all, I have a 1GB Kingston DataTraveller on which I want to install any small distro of Linux.I have tried to do this using many methods available online but I still get "Boot error" when I try to boot from USB. I have configured my system to boot from USB in the BIOS.My last attempt was using Puppy Linux's Universal Installer which also resulted in failure. Please suggest a working technique.Any distro, any version will do...

08-16-2009	#2 (permalink)
reed9 Linux Guru Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Boston, MA Posts: 2,202	Have you tried unetbootin? Also, there are a number of distros which release flash img files, as well as iso files. If you download the image file, you can write it to the usb stick as so Code: dd bs=8M if=/path/to/image.img of=/dev/sd(x) Replacing /pat/to/image.img with the correct path, of course, and /dev/sd(x) is your usb device. (You can find out what your device is called with sudo fdisk -l.) Make sure you're using just /dev/sd(x), without a number following the x, ie, /dev/sd(x)1. __________________ The Arch Way How to Ask Questions the Smart Way Registered Linux User #482863

08-17-2009	#3 (permalink)
Rubberman Linux Guru Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: I can be found either 40 miles west of Chicago, or in a galaxy far, far away. Posts: 2,662	I have found some USB drives (especially older ones) don't support booting. I have a Lexar 1GB drive that won't boot, though I have other thumb drives (and SD cards in USB carriers) that will just fine. So, try another drive if possible to see if this is your problem. __________________ Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real time.

08-17-2009	#4 (permalink)
xp_even Just Joined! Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 9	I am getting pretty confused with all this.Can you suggest me a good distro which you have successfully booted from a USB drive.And yes I have tried Unetbootin...same error occured. I am working from Windows XP by the way...Do I need a live CD?I have the iso files of dsl.

08-17-2009	#5 (permalink)
Rubberman Linux Guru Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: I can be found either 40 miles west of Chicago, or in a galaxy far, far away. Posts: 2,662	I've used unetbootin from Windows XP any number of times. The fact is that some (especially older) USB thumb drives don't boot reliably, or at all. I have built successful liveUSB drives with unetbootin with the following distributions: Ubuntu 8.10 and 9.04 Dynebolic 2.5.2 Fedora 10 (haven't tried 11) Knoppix 5.1.1 (CD) and 5.3.1 (DVD) Puppy 4.1.2 Slax 6.0.9 Workbench Linux 1.4 __________________ Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real time.

08-18-2009	#6 (permalink)
ryptyde Linux Newbie Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: Tragic City Michigan USA Posts: 195	I've successfully installed Fedora 10 and F11 to usb using Fedoras liveusb-creator from Fedora and from Windows. And as Rubberman stated used unetbootin from Fedora and Windows to install live images of Slax, SAM, AUSTRUMI, PartedMagic to name a few. Maybe try a different usb device as suggested, they're pretty inexpensive now. EDIT: just used unetbootin to download and install DSL 4.4.10 to a 256MB Lexar JumpDrive and booted from a Acer Aspire One and it is working well. This usb drive is about 4 years old and I paid about the same as a 4GB drive sells for today Last edited by ryptyde; 08-18-2009 at 01:39 AM.. Reason: add dsl version

08-18-2009

#7 (permalink)

Lakshmipathi

Linux Engineer

Join Date: Sep 2006

Location: 3rd rock from sun

Posts: 1,093

Quote:

Can you suggest me a good distro which you have successfully booted from a USB drive

My first attempt is with Slax , It's pretty simple to install and worked perfectly.
Check out their site : Slax: your pocket operating system

__________________
- Lakshmipathi.G
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FOSS India Award winning ext3fs Undelete tool and tutorials www.giis.co.in
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08-20-2009	#8 (permalink)
xp_even Just Joined! Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 9	Over the past two days, i experimented with DSL, Puppy and Slax.Both Puppy and Slax gave me the same "Boot error" at reboot. However, DSl showed me a GRUB screen and after selecting "DSL"(the only option), it gave me the following error Booting 'DSL' root(hd0,1) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83 kernel /linux24 ramdisk_size=100000 lang=us quiet vga=791 frugal Error 28: Selected item cannot fit into memory Press any key to continue... BTW, I installed DSL from within the DSl live CD. Do I need to change any settings?

08-20-2009	#9 (permalink)
Rubberman Linux Guru Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: I can be found either 40 miles west of Chicago, or in a galaxy far, far away. Posts: 2,662	It sounds like your computer doesn't have enough RAM to run these distributions. DSL runs on systems with under 128M of RAM, so either you have a really old system with very little memory on it, or there is some other problem here. __________________ Sometimes, real fast is almost as good as real time.

08-20-2009	#10 (permalink)
xp_even Just Joined! Join Date: May 2009 Posts: 9	My system is old but I am pretty much sure its still capable of running DSL: Intel P4 3.0 HT processor with 2 X 512 MB of DDR2 667 RAM. Is there a workaround for that error or something?

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